The Marconi Legacy – assessing the heritage of the Wireless
Communication industry in Essex

Tim Wander and Tony Crosby

Introduction

This article sets out to briefly trace the history of the development of the
Marconi Companies in Essex based around key milestones in the development of
wireless communications and the main sites on which Marconi’s developed
these technologies and manufactured the equipment. The significance of these
sites to the history and heritage of the wireless communications industry will
be assessed and their current condition highlighted in order to indicate what
heritage of the industry in Essex survives and what has been lost forever. The
most significant sites, which tell the story, will be discussed in detail but
other sites for research and training, manufacturing and of social significance
will also be mentioned.

Guglielmo Marconi(25th April 1874 – 20th July
1937)

Marconi was half Irish and half Italian, an inventor, electrical engineer
and pioneer of wireless communication, often being credited as the 'inventor of
radio', who in 1909 shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with the German Scientist
Karl Ferdinand Braun 'in recognition of their contributions to the development
of wireless telegraphy'. Marconi was responsible for building on the work of
many previous experimenters and physicists and turning a series of laboratory
experiments into a reliable and practical form of wireless communication, later
known as radio. He was also both an entrepreneur and businessman, and founded
in 1897 The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in Britain, which
eventually became the Marconi Company. After 15 years of intensive struggle his
Company went from strength to strength defining, designing and building the
modern world of electronics, broadcasting and communications as we know it
today.

Without question what Marconi did was to invent what became an entirely new
and huge industry, the technologies of which changed the world forever. In his
hands an obscure, and to most people unintelligible branch of physics and
electrical engineering eventually became a simple consumer product. Throughout
its operation the Marconi Company offices were always located in central London
but from the earliest days the heart of the company's manufacturing, and after
1927 its research and development, were centralised around Chelmsford in
Essex.

Why Chelmsford?

1898 had been a busy year for the young Italian inventor with tests and
demonstrations taking place in the south of England and in Ireland, but despite
all his success, publicity, demonstrations, tests, trials, and even Royal
approval, the Company’s order books were empty. He still believed that
the orders would come and to meet anticipated demand for new equipment the
Marconi Company sought new premises for manufacturing and administration. The
existing Head Office at 28 Mark Lane in the City of London was already
overcrowded and could never support the proposed expansion or any form of large
scale manufacturing.

From his earliest research in London Marconi had found that his experiments
were often plagued with electrical noise from tramways and lifts, and
Chelmsford was still reasonably free from such problems. Chelmsford had other
advantages as buildings were far cheaper outside London and the county of Essex
is flat enough for wireless experiments and erecting aerials. Chelmsford also
had a direct rail link into the capital and was reasonably near the Port of
London whose huge volume of shipping represented one of the Marconi
Company’s immediate market places. Chelmsford also had in place a range
of existing electrical and manufacturing industries including Crompton & Co
Ltd who by 1881 offered a complete range of electrical systems. Crompton's
designed and manufactured dynamos, switchgear, circuit breakers, motors and
electric meters, as well as lamps. These Chelmsford based industries offered
Marconi a ready trained workforce and industrial support network.i

Hall Street, Chelmsford

In December 1898, Marconi took out a 20 year lease on Messrs. Wenleys’
furniture store in Hall Street, Chelmsford, which had been built by John Hall
in 1858 as a steam driven silk mill. This mill closed in 1863 due to the
decline in the Essex silk industry, but Courtaulds of Braintree, who survived
the downturn in the trade, ran the mill from 1865 until 1892 when it became
Messrs. Wenleys’ furniture storage depot.ii

Hall Street now became the world’s first wireless equipment factory,
initially employing just 26 men and 2 boys. It was set up to manufacture
wireless sets and receivers to Marconi’s latest designs, but the new
science was still in its infancy and the Company struggled, so had to diversify
into manufacturing motor-car ignition coils, X-ray apparatus and other
scientific equipment in order to balance the books. Although having a large
factory for such a nascent industry was ambitious, previously the wireless
equipment had been built by hand as required, using various modified apparatus
bought from established scientific laboratory suppliers, a process that could
never hope to cope with quantity production of commercial equipment. To fulfil
any commercial order, especially for the Royal Navy, all equipment parts had to
be interchangeable and all apparatus had to be built to a high quality and
designed to be easily serviced and maintained. At the Hall Street works new
departments responsible solely for their own specific areas of research, design
and manufacture were established. In September 1899 a transmitting station was
built directly across the road from the factory premises to test equipment as
it came off the production line and the Hall Street mast soon became one of
Chelmsford’s landmarks, although now long gone.

Marconi wireless equipment became the corner stone of the growing number of
shore based wireless stations and his equipment was carried on-board all the
great Atlantic liners including the Lusitania, Mauretania, Baltic, Olympic and
the ill-fated Titanic, all built at Hall Street. All the equipment for the
Royal Navy, the network of coastal stations and numerous other merchant vessels
was built there. Equipment from Hall Street was used at the Poldhu station in
Cornwall that allowed Marconi to send the Morse code 'S' across the Atlantic in
December 1901 and equipment built here was sent around the world.iii

After Marconi’s left in 1912 the Hall Street factory building served
for many years as the Mid Essex Divisional Offices of the Essex and Suffolk
Water Company. In 2010 the water company vacated the site and the adjacent,
original Chelmsford waterworks site of the 1850s was sold for housing. However,
the world’s first wireless factory has survived with the exterior more or
less unchanged. The Marconi work's sign has long since gone but the building
can be considered to the birthplace of the radio and electronics industry in
this country, a blue plaque records its place in history and the building is
Listed Grade II. The factory building has remained empty since 2010 and is now
the subject of development proposals for private residential and commercial
uses, although there are hopes to use some of the building as a Marconi
Heritage Centre.

New Street, Chelmsford

In January 1912 Marconi’s new Managing Director Godfrey C. Isaacs
proposed building the world’s first purpose designed and built wireless
factory on the local cricket ground in Chelmsford that was owned by the Church
Commissioners. This whole site would be known as the Marconi New Street Works.
(Figs. 1 & 2) Architects William Dunn and Robert Watson of London were
commissioned to draw up plans for the first factory to be specifically designed
for the construction of Marconi's wireless equipment. The hope was that the new
factory would be finished and working by mid-June 1912, an almost impossible
target, in order to show off the factory on 22nd June to leading competitors,
Government officials and other experts who would then be in London for the
Wireless Conference. Godfrey Isaacs’s plans were not just for a new
factory; he wanted the new complex to be a complete self-contained village
within a town. To the north two new roads - Marconi Road (Fig. 3) and Bishop
Road - of cottages would be built for the Company employees.

Construction, using 500 men, started on 26th February 1912 and despite a
short building strike, just 17 weeks later, the changeover from Hall Street to
the new 70,000 square foot (6,500 m2) New Street factory complex was
accomplished in just one weekend.ivThe original offices and factory were much
extended over the years: in 1927 additions had been made to support work on the
imperial wireless system and further extensions followed in 1936 to handle the
volume of work. In 1938 the five-storey Art Deco Marconi House was constructed
and in 1941 Building 46 was added at the Glebe Road end of the site for high
power transmitter development. After the war the canteen Building 720, which at
the time had the largest unsupported roof span, was added. The site probably
reached its maximum degree of sprawl by 1980, but in 1992 it was decided to
remove most of the buildings in the western half of the site, including
Building 46. In their place rose Eastwood House, to be used by Marconi Radar
after they had vacated the old Crompton Works on Writtle Road.

The fate of the New Street site was sealed following the spectacular
collapse of the Marconi Company in 2001. A successor company, Selex, remained
until 2008 when the factory was abandoned. January 2013 saw the start of the
demolition of most of the site for residential redevelopment. All that remains
are the Grade II Listed office building fronting New Street, the water tower
and power house, plus Eastwood House. A blue plaque on the office frontage
records the fact that the world’s first radio broadcast was made by Dame
Nellie Melba from this site and there is an interpretation board recording the
significance of the site. All that remains associated with Marconi’s in
the vicinity of New Street, as is so often the case, are the staff cottages in
Marconi Road and Bishop Road.v

Writtle

In 1919 the Marconi Company urgently needed a location that was remote from
the electrical noise and the high power transmitters being developed and tested
in the main Chelmsford New Street works for researching the use of radios in
aircraft. The plan was to move the newly formed Marconi Airborne Telephony
Research Department to the village of Writtle, making use of a former Royal
Flying Corps hut and landing field in Lowford (now Lawford) Lane (Figs 4 &
5). Marconi’s had long been recognised as the pioneers of trans-oceanic
and maritime wireless services and by 1920 at Writtle they had evolved to be
the only aircraft radiotelephony development group in the world. The remit was
to provide the emerging new market for commercial aviation with reliable
long-range communications equipment, which would be essential for its safe
development and operations. When on 25th August 1919 the world’s first
commercial scheduled service was started from London’s first civil
aerodrome on Hounslow Heath, each aircraft carried an early wireless set
designed and built by the Marconi team at Writtle. The apparatus was
manufactured at New Street but the design, development, testing, demonstrating
and installation was all controlled by the Writtle staff.

Following the first radio broadcast by Dame Nellie Melba from the New Street
works radio broadcasting became a sensational success and the task of making it
all happen, to build a transmitter and operate a broadcasting station was given
to Marconi’s Airborne Telephony Research Department in Writtle; the
future of British radio broadcasting would be determined in an ex-army wooden
hut on the edge of a large Essex field! From 14th February 1922, for 11 months,
until 17th January 1923 the young engineers launched and sustained the first
regular scheduled public radio broadcasting service in Britain from a timber
hut with the call sign 2MT. The success of the Writtle broadcasts led directly
to the formation of the BBC. On 14th November 1922, at 6 pm the first regular
broadcast was made from Marconi House in the Strand. Peter Eckersley became the
BBC’s first Chief Engineer, and he took most of the Writtle pioneers with
him to build the new National Broadcasting service from the ground up. When he
joined he knew he was the Chief Engineer because he was the BBC’s only
engineer. When he left, six and a half years later, he was in charge of 304
engineers and technicians. Under his technical stewardship by 1926 the BBC had
grown to become the world’s leading Broadcasting service and could boast
ten main transmitting stations, ten relay stations and over two million
listeners. From an original staff of four the company had grown to 552 in
number. From its lone voice in Writtle in 1922, the various stations of the BBC
could now be heard by 55% of the country at a strength suitable for reception
on a crystal set and it could also be heard across Northern Europe.vi

The Marconi Writtle site then formed the centre of the Marconi's airborne
radio research effort throughout the 1920s and 1930s. When war threatened in
the late 1930s, the RAF was still using radio equipment with very limited
facilities and ranges. New equipment specifications and a contract were given
to Marconi’s in October 1939, who were appointed as the main contractor
for design and production. One of the design teams was lead by one of Marconi's
chief designers (later Sir) Christopher Cockerell (of Hovercraft fame), then a
senior engineer with the Marconi Company at Writtle. Work upon the first of
these Bomber Command sets was begun on the 22nd October 1939, and it was
completed and flight-tested on 2nd January 1940. This was an incredible feat of
engineering, project management and manufacturing. Much of the work was done by
the Development department in the original Writtle hut, which had now been
joined by a random group of similar laboratories, also based in huts. Complete
equipment was installed in operational RAF Bomber Command aircraft by teams of
Company engineers just five months later in June 1940, a notable achievement
for all who worked on the project in such a short space of time. Over 80,000
sets of equipment were manufactured during the war, the majority of them being
used by RAF and the other Commonwealth air forces.

Following the end of the Second World War, the Writtle site continued to
grow, eventually becoming an important part of the Marconi Communication
Systems Limited Company, but the site was closed on 11th November 1987 and
redeveloped for housing as Melba Court where today only an interpretation board
records the heritage of the site. Beforehand, however, in 1960 the hut from
which the first public broadcasts were made was moved to Kings Road School in
Chelmsford and has subsequently been acquired by Chelmsford Museums and is now
at Sandford Mill Museum.

The Writtle site also used a site at Guys Farm, just 100 metres from the
main Marconi site at the top of Lawford Lane. Thought to have been purchased at
auction sometime in the early 1930s, until March 1965 the farm housed the
Marconi Specialised Components Division manufacturing group, which moved to a
new factory at Billericay. This Division, which had been formed in July 1962,
had as its primary function the design and manufacture of specialised
components which were unobtainable, to the specifications demanded, from
outside sources of supply. In the period 1962-5 these activities expanded to
the point where nearly 300 components were on general offer. In 1969 the Guys
Farm site housed the mechanical engineering laboratory and during the 1980s it
was used for system integration and customer system reference models. The Guys
Farm site continued in use until the main site’s closure and still
retained its milking parlour and tiled floors and walls from its farm days. The
farm has now been demolished and the site used for a modern housing
development.vii

Great Baddow

In 1937 the Marconi Company brought together their various radio, television
and telephony research teams in a single location, the Art Deco style Marconi
Research Centre in Great Baddow. Research at this site spanned military and
civilian technology covering the full range of products, including radio,
radar, telecommunications and microelectronics. As the electronics industry
developed the campus expanded during the 1940s and 1950s to include research
into general physics, high voltage, vacuum physics and semiconductors. At its
peak the Centre employed more than 1,200 engineers, technicians, craftsmen and
support staff. The centre is extant, now being the BAE Systems Advanced
Technology Centre. The site includes a prominent local landmark, the 360-foot
(110 m) high former Chain Home radar transmitter tower moved here by
Marconi’s c.1954 from RAF Canewdon. It is one of only five Home Chain
radar masts from WWII remaining nationally and the only one to retain its three
platforms.

Waterhouse Lane and Westway, Chelmsford

The English Electric Valve Company factory in Waterhouse Lane was set up by
Marconi's in 1942 as a wartime production unit to make electrical valves and
the newly developed magnetron, a powerful generator of microwaves, which was
the heart of the improved precision radar sets of 1943 essential for night
location of U-boats (to win the Battle of the Atlantic) and to beat the night
bombers. Before the end of the war seven types of magnetron were being produced
at a rate of 500 per week. The English Electric Valve Co Ltd was formed in 1947
to take over this factory since when it has been developing and making a range
of electronic tubes for peaceful purposes such as television, marine radar and
industrial heating. In addition tubes are made for defence and special
purposes, including ‘seeing in the dark’ sights needed by soldiers
and firemen. The company was renamed to e2v Technologies in 2002 as part of a
management buyout following the collapse of the Marconi group. This important
factory survives in use in Waterhouse Lane, Chelmsford, partly concealed behind
inter-war housing and the remaining buildings of Waterhouse Farm, including a
c.1600 Grade II Listed barn now converted to the social club.

Also on Waterhouse Lane Marconi’s acquired a site as a sports ground
in 1919. Due to the post-war expansion of business, which severely overloaded
the New Street factory and offices, some activities had to be moved out and the
sports ground site was developed from 1954 as a modern broadcast and television
studio design centre. The post-war Marconi series of TV cameras was largely
designed here, first black and white (1949) and then colour (1954), together
with all associated equipment including telecine and later videotape equipment
(for recording and reproducing TV programmes on film and on magnetic tape
respectively). All this equipment was manufactured at the New Street factory
where sound broadcasting transmitters had been designed and made since 1922 and
TV transmitters since 1935. The Waterhouse Lane factory opened in 1964 to take
over the manufacture of this equipment from New Street but closed in 1999 and
was demolished in 2001. The adjacent Marconi bowls club, and rifle and pistol
club, that traced their history back to WWII were also demolished. The site is
now occupied by a Homebase DIY store and small commercial premises.

In April 1900 Marconi had formed The Marconi International Marine
Communication Company Limited, known as Marconi Marine, to provide the shipping
industry with radio equipment and trained radio officers. In 1962 the Company
moved its activities from New Street to 'Elettra House' (named after
Marconi’s research yacht),a purpose-built site on Westway, Chelmsford.
Marconi Marine also provided communications equipment for the expanding
offshore oil industry. Following the collapse of Marconi's this site was
demolished and redeveloped as a car showroom.

Writtle Road, Chelmsford

The Marconi Company had been active in radar from the earliest days of the
new science and its specialised systems company, Marconi Radar Systems Ltd,
once had a leading place in the industry. Its products were used by all the
British armed services and by the UK civil airport authorities. The company was
the largest radar manufacturer in the UK, employing about 3000 people at the
Chelmsford and Gateshead works. After starting at the New Street Works, Marconi
Radar moved in 1968 to the factory originally built in 1896 by Crompton &
Co in Writtle Road, Chelmsford. Marconi’s closed the factory in 1992 and
the whole site was demolished a few years later apart from the small office
block fronting on Writtle Road, now a pharmacy. A large housing development
occupies the rest of the site.

Other Sites in Essex

Marconi’s had a presence on dozens of other sites throughout Essex,
developed during the hundred plus years of its existence, not only for
research, design and manufacturing, but also for staff training, for community
and social purposes. Many of the sites were small and short lived and hence of
minor significance, while others, including those discussed above, were of
major significance historically, technically and archaeologically. Many of
these significant sites have been lost apart from their facades (such as New
Street and Writtle Road) or in total (such as the Writtle sites, Waterhouse
Lane and Elettra House), while others have survived (such as Hall Street, Great
Baddow and e2v on Waterhouse Lane).

The building in Frinton which housed the world’s first radio college,
the Wireless Telegraph School of 1901 survives, as does Springfield Place,
Chelmsford, which was used as a training and drawing office and apprentice
accommodation in the 1970s. However, the Marconi School of Wireless
Communications established in 1921 in Arbour Lane, Chelmsford has been
demolished and replaced with housing. The Social Club which was in a former
Victorian school building on the corner of New Street and Victoria Road has
also been lost to the redevelopment of the site as has its replacement in
Beehive Lane. In 1903 Marconi’s built a wireless receiver station in
Broomfield, Chelmsford, which by 1911 was also used for research and training,
and continued in use until the 1960s, but this has also been cleared for
housing. Many others of the radio station sites have been lost with no
indication of their existence. One exception is the Ongar Radio Station of
1922, one of the most advanced radio stations in the world at the time, which
has been lost, but the adjacent 12 staff houses still called Marconi Bungalows
on Epping Road at North Weald survive as the only evidence (as with the staff
houses adjacent to the New Street factory) of former Marconi activity in the
area (Fig. 6).

However, a number of the more recent industrial units have survived as they
are now used by successor companies. These sites include Christopher Martin
Road, Basildon to which the Marconi Aeronautical Division moved from New Street
in 1954 and which now houses Selex; the Bushy Hill Radar Research Station of
1954 in South Woodham Ferrers now used by BAE Systems; the Marconi Specialised
Components Division building of 1965 in Radford Crescent, Billericay, although
this is now under threat; and Taveloc House in Freebournes Road, Witham built
in 1967 as a microelectronics factory.

Conclusion

For over 100 years the Marconi Companies’ work in Chelmsford and Essex
dominated and defined the modern age of electronics, radio, radar, and mobile
communications. The company had a massive impact on the working and social
lives of thousands of Essex people, as well as on the County’s
townscapes, especially that of Chelmsford, ‘reinforcing the importance of
Essex in the global history of telecommunications’.viii The collapse of
the Marconi group in 2001 still ranks as one of the greatest catastrophes in
British industrial history, but its built legacy is being rapidly eroded as the
buildings where all the work occurred are redeveloped, having not been awarded
the protection that such significant sites deserve. Only two of all these
dozens of sites are protected, the Hall Street and New Street buildings being
Grade II Listed, the former being redeveloped as private residential and
commercial premises, so the public will not be able to have access to the
building to learn about its significance to history and heritage of the
City.

Our industrial heritage has great value and many benefits.ix The Marconi
built legacy is highly significant to Chelmsford especially, as this is where
Marconi’s had the greatest impact on people and place, but also to the
whole of Essex, nationally and internationally. Preserving and interpreting for
current and future generations this wealth of industrial heritage has
educational, financial (including tourism), community and social, and
environmental benefits. Former industrial buildings are evidence of how earlier
generations worked and lived, some within living memory, and hence have
archaeological and historical educational value. They can give local
communities a sense of their identity. They can be adapted to new uses
benefitting the local economy through regeneration providing employment
opportunities and attracting tourists who wish to study this aspect of the
County’s industrial past. Well-designed preservation of historic
buildings adds individual character to the townscape much appreciated by local
communities and visitors alike.x The adaptation of historic buildings, as
opposed to demolition and new build on the cleared site, has been proven to
have greater environmental benefits.xi

Just as the visible remains of prehistoric burials, castles, abbeys and
grand houses are reminders of this country's rich and diverse cultural heritage
spanning many thousands of years, so also are the factories and workshops
reminders of a more recent era of urban work and life, a tangible reminder of
our past, indicating where we have come from and how we have arrived at our
present world. It is essential therefore that what survives of our recent past
is surveyed and recorded in order to inform a developing conservation and
planning policy so that significant examples are preserved for future
generations. Once this industrial heritage is destroyed it is lost forever and
cannot be replaced.

This article has identified just a few of the dozens of sites in Essex where
the telecommunications age was developed. It is a declining resource, the
remaining elements of which need to be quickly assessed for their significance
to the history and heritage of the industry and afforded the most appropriate
protection, made accessible by and interpreted for the current and future
generations.